"Meredyth Sparks' Differendialism: The Art of Sublime Micrologies." In Robert Hobbs and Nicolas Baurriaud, Meredith Sparks. Blau, France: Monograph Editions, 2009. Text © Robert Hobbs 1 Meredyth Sparks *** with essays by Nicolas Bourriaud & Robert Hobbs MONOGRAFIK ÉDITIONS 6 7 MEREDYTH Sparks’ DIFFERENDIALISM: THE Art OF SUBLIME MICROLOGIES Robert Hobbs Micrology is not just metaphysics in crumbs, any more than [Barnett] Newman’s painting is Delacroix in scraps. Micrology inscribes the occurrence of a thought as the unthought that remains to be thought in the decline of ‘great’ philosophical thought. The avant-gardist1 attempt inscribes the occurrence of a sensory now as what cannot be presented and which remains to be presented in the decline of great representational painting. Like micrology, the avant-garde is not concerned with what happens to the ‘subject’, but with: ‘Does it happen?’, with privation. This is the sense in which it still belongs to the aesthetics of the sublime. —Jean-François Lyotard, “The Sublime and the Avant-Garde” in The Inhuman, 1988 (English translation, 1991) Lyotard’s postmodern sublime is “an art of negation, a perpetual negation […] based on a never-ending critique of representation that should contribute to the preservation of heterogeneity, of optimal dissensus […] [it] does not lead towards a resolution; the confrontation with the unpresentable leads to radical openness.” —Hans Bertens, The Idea of the Postmodern: A History, 1995 If we look for paramount changes in the late twentieth century and new millennium that have had an enormous impact on human beings’ self-image, near the top of the list, together with genetic research, cloning, and global warming, is the democratization and decentralization of the heretofore unheralded wealth of information afforded by the global index known as the “World Wide Web.” Although the concept for globally linking computers into the overall structure called the “Internet” originated in 1969,2 this network needed a complementary system or platform that could store and connect documents in a hypertext format so that the Internet could become widely accessible to non-specialists. Initiated in 1989, this platform is the World Wide Web. Recognized by its characteristically abbreviated prefix http://www., the Web is the crucial link and key that enables direct searches of documents and other resources through hyperlinks and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). In 1991 America Online (AOL for DOS) made the Web more accessible, and in 1993 the graphical browser called “Mosaic” (later renamed “Netscape”) enabled Web users direct access to sites integrating texts with graphics, images, and other media so that they would no longer be forced to open a new file or window each time they needed to look at a different type of information. In 1994, access to material on the Web became demonstrably easier for non-specialists with the first directory and search engines that AOL and Yahoo provided. In 1995, Microsoft Internet Explorer became a leader in the search engine category, and that same year AltaVista’s researchers developed the phenomenal means for storing and indexing, in an easily retrievable manner, all the language on all HTML pages on the Internet. Working together, the triumvirate of World Wide Web, Mosaic browser, and AOL and Yahoo search engines made the Internet so user-friendly by the mid ’90s that personal computers (PCs) were regarded as valued home appliances, and the word “Internet” became a household term. Even before the appearance of this troika of innovations, a series of innovations established a basis for utilizing computers as artistic tools. In the 1960s the United States’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) devised ways to convert analog images (based on electrical pulses) to digital signals (broken down into 56 Untitled (Gudrun with black circle), 2007 57 binary codes) so that the surface of the moon could be photographed and mapped. I propose as a possible candidate the neologism “Differendialism” (which could be In addition, NASA found ways to employ computers to enhance shots of the moon’s shortened to “Diffism” or “Differism”).4 It is based on Jean-François Lyotard’s theory of surface, which their space probes were relaying back to earth. In the 1980s SCSI the differend,5 which refers to disaffiliated voices and consequent lack of common (small computer system interface) was innovated to serve as an accelerated means ground for arbitrating differences. The primary reason for employing this term is the for transferring material from peripheral devices to computers; a decade later this internal evidence provided by Guyton’s, Sparks’, and Walker’s work. But since all bridge proved to be essential for linking digital cameras to computers. In 1990 Adobe three are well versed in theory, there is also ample reason to believe that their early produced Photoshop, a digital processing software, to facilitate the editing of computer conscious knowledge of Lyotard’s sublime and his related theory of the differend graphics; it also made typesetting obsolete and ushered in an era of desktop publishing. has also played a significant role in their development. One of Guyton’s favorite Then, in 1994 Apple released the first digital camera to employ a serial cable, which professors at the University of Tennessee, literary critic Allen Dunn wrote in the early could be connected to home computers; its lead was followed the next year by Kodak’s ‘90s an important essay on the Lyotardian sublime entitled “A Tyranny of Justice: The and Casio’s models, and then in 1996 Sony’s version appeared. The same year that Ethics of Lyotard’s Differend.”6 Sparks has cited the London-based ICA publication on Apple’s digital camera was being marketed to nonprofessional photographers, Lexmark postmodernism, focusing on Lyotard and the sublime as the primary document that Printers produced the first color printer for computers. Three years later, in 1997, introduced her to the theories of recent art.7 And Walker, who has participated in Hewlett-Packard put on the market its user-friendly “PhotoSmart” system, consisting of theoretical discussions with the other two since the ‘90s, is so well versed in a range a digital camera, printer, and film scanner. Computer artists were almost immediately of critical theories, including Lyotard’s, that he regularly punctuates his conversations able to avail themselves of many of these tools. And shortly thereafter, ingenious artists, with references to them. who were not part of the computer art mainstream, were able to innovate ways to In his 1988 book The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, Lyotard addresses the problem redirect the original functions of these new capabilities to unanticipated ends, ultimately of representing disenfranchised subjects, which he calls “the differend.” He defines creating paintings made with ink-jet printers and digital collages. this term in the following way: Among the most important artists making these types of works is the group of three friends—Wade Guyton, Meredyth Sparks, and Kelley Walker—who became closely As distinguished from litigation, a differend [différend] would be a case of associated in the early 1990s when they were all students at the University of Tennessee, conflict, between (at least) two parties, that cannot be equitably resolved Knoxville.3 Since that time, they have continued to nurture and sustain their friendship, for lack of a rule of judgment applicable to both arguments. One side’s even during the second half of the ‘90s, when one after the other moved to New York legitimacy does not imply the other’s lack of legitimacy. However, applying City; today they continue to maintain warm and mutually reinforcing relationships with a single rule of judgment to both in order to settle their differend as though each other. In addition to being friends and sharing a regional background, these it were merely a litigation would wrong (at least) one of them (and both of three artists are united in preferring to work with an array of pirated imagery from them if neither side admits this rule). Damages result from an injury which the Web as well as scanned and printed copies of material from a number of print is inflicted upon the rules of a genre of discourse but which is reparable sources, including books and magazines. Sometimes they connect these reproductions according to those rules. A wrong results from the fact that the rules of the with abstract elements that they generate in Photoshop, create by working directly on genre of discourse by which one judges are not those of the judged genre the glass faces of scanners, or make by employing more traditional means such as or genres of discourse.8 collage or silkscreen. They regard the glass of their scanners as surrogate painting or collage surfaces that enable them to create uneasy conjunctions of various types Doubly victimized, people placed in differendialist situations not only suffer the of images that are realized through the use of giant inkjet printers or silk-screens customary injustices associated with injured parties, but they also experience the in Walker’s case. Guyton and Walker are widely known for developing their own singular disadvantage of being unable to represent their claims within the framework of separate practices in addition to the collaborative one called “Guyton\Walker” (with socially ratified discourses. In his essay “Judiciousness in Dispute, or Kant after Marx” an appropriate backslash): these